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“Is that you, Alexander?” Rapp whispered to himself, while he leaned back slightly.
Without taking his eyes off the man, Rapp brought the camera to his eye and snapped a few photos as the man approached. The moment of truth was fast approaching. Would he turn into the café and go to his office or would he circle the block an
d check things out? Rapp knew what he would do and was slightly disappointed when the man stopped in front of the café. He started talking to the old man who was standing at the hostess stand. Rapp had a sudden pang of anxiety. He needed this guy alive. With his back to him Rapp could now see the man’s warm-up jacket had a white Adidas logo across the back. Rapp’s eyes slid to the man sitting no more than forty feet away in the parked car. He hadn’t moved a muscle.
The guy in the Adidas jacket lit a cigarette and continued talking to the old man, then kissed him on both cheeks and walked away. Everything about the guy matched the surveillance footage, except the cigarette. But then again, he wouldn’t have been able to smoke a cigarette while waiting in line at a Starbucks in the United States. The man in the John Deere hat threaded his way through a few pedestrians who were waiting to get into the café. Rapp relaxed a bit, but kept an eye on him. He lowered the camera and wondered if this was actually the guy he was after, or if he was reading too far into things. He rubbed his eyes and checked his watch again.
When he looked back down at the street he saw something totally unexpected. The man in the Adidas jacket suddenly veered toward the parked car with the guy sitting in the front seat. Rapp hastily brought the camera up and hit the auto focus button. The image of the pedestrian and the car came into focus. The glow of the street lamps threw off enough light that he could see what was going on, but Rapp worried that there might not be enough light for the camera to capture any clear images. Suddenly, the pedestrian began waving to the guy sitting in the parked car. As he got closer to the vehicle he casually bent over so he could see through the open driver’s side window. It was a one-way street and the car was parked facing the café on the same side of the street. The man in the car was sitting in the front passenger seat, probably so he had more legroom.
Rapp realized what was going on only a second or two before it happened. He twisted the lens as far as it would go and held the trigger down. The high-speed digital camera began clicking away at the rate of six frames per second. In the faint light, he glimpsed the man in the hat reaching into the car and then there was an ever-so-brief flash. Not the white flash of a camera, but the yellow flash of a muzzle. Rapp took his finger off the camera’s trigger and stood completely still. He didn’t want to miss what would happen next. Three seconds went by and then five. Rapp counted to ten and the man in the hat was still at the car window chatting away, moving his hands like he was telling an involved story.
Rapp lowered the camera and said, “You’re talking to a dead man, aren’t you?” He shook his head and said, “You’re going to stand there and act like nothing happened, and then you’ll slowly put your gun back in your pants and walk away.”
Rapp watched all of this unfold with sincere professional admiration. This guy had a set of balls on him. What he had just witnessed verified his suspicions. The terrorists who paid to have Alexander and Ross killed were not happy with the services Alexander Deckas had provided them and now they wanted him dead. It was not unusual in this line of work. In a sense, the business arrangement was a bit like a man leaving his wife for the woman he’s been having an affair with. The fact that the same man decides to then cheat on the woman he originally cheated with should surprise no one, least of all the woman herself.
Rapp watched as the assassin stood up and stepped away from the car. He then waved at the dead man sitting in it and started back down the street. Rapp quickly glanced back toward the café to see if anyone was following him. The big guy he’d spotted earlier in the day was nowhere to be seen. Only the old man appeared to notice what had just happened. Rapp’s eyes glided back to the man in the John Deere hat. He expected him to turn the corner and vanish, maybe lose the jacket and hat and come back around for a shot at the other two should they appear. The urge to follow was strong, but with so many unknowns it was not wise. This was Deckas’s neighborhood. He would know every crack and crevice, and there was no telling who he might have working for him.
The assassin surprised Rapp by entering the last building on the street. It looked like it was probably an apartment building.
“What the fuck?” Rapp muttered to himself.
He scanned the apartment building and noted the windows where lights were on. After thirty seconds not a single light had been turned on or off. Something told Rapp it would be a good idea to move further away from the window. He took two steps back. If this guy had a night vision scope, he could be sitting in one of the dark apartments scanning the hotel to see who was watching. If Rapp were in his shoes, that was exactly what he would be doing. Rapp took another step to the side and looked at the screen on the back of the camera. Using his right thumb he spun the wheel and scrolled through the photos. When he got to the right sequence he tightened the frame. The quality wasn’t great, but he could make out what looked like an arm coming through the window of the car and extending across the front seat. He went back one more photo and the screen went bright with a muzzle flash. Suddenly, everything was much clearer. Rapp could now make out a gun with a silencer attached to the end.
This had to be Alexander Deckas, and if he knew about the guy in the car it was likely he knew about the other two men who were looking for him. That was where his focus would be—either trying to avoid them or coming to kill them. Based on what he had just witnessed, Rapp felt it was the latter. But why the apartment building? Rapp thought back to the big guy who earlier in the day he had spied stuffing money in the shirt pocket of the old man who ran the café. The old man did not appear overjoyed to be talking to the goon. It was likely that they had leaned on him. Probably threatened him in some way. The old guy had several choices at that point: play along, go to the authorities, or tip off his tenant. And if the tenant was in fact Alexander Deckas, or whatever his real name was, and the old man knew what he did for a living, why wouldn’t he go to him? Rapp had just watched him dispatch a hired gun in the middle of a busy commercial district without raising even the slightest suspicion.
Rapp’s thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of his phone. He assumed it was Coleman or Brooks so he pressed the button on the earpiece and said, “Where are you guys?”
“It’s Marcus, Mitch.”
Marcus Dumond was a computer expert who worked Counterterrorism for Langley.
“What’s up?” asked Rapp.
“I just spoke to a buddy at the DGSE.” Dumond was referring to the Direction Generale de la Securité Exterieure, France’s top external intelligence organization. “They have a line on this Alexander Deckas. They say his real name is Gavrilo Gazich. He’s a Bosnian who cut his teeth during that nasty little thing they had over there.”
Rapp stepped away from the wall and looked out the window. “Lovely. What else did they tell you?”
“He’s wanted in The Hague.”
“For war crimes?” Rapp asked somewhat surprised. “How old is he?”
“Thirty-five.”
“Well he couldn’t have been more than a grunt when they were killing each other back in the mid-nineties.” Rapp checked the windows on the apartment building across the street. “Why in the hell would they mess with someone so far down the chain of command?”
“He was a sniper. I guess he shot over fifty civilians when they laid siege to Sarajevo.”
Rapp’s entire body went rigid for a split second and then he casually walked away from the window. It took him a few seconds before he even took a breath, and then he swore out loud.
“What’s wrong?” asked Dumond.
“Next time you might want to get to that part first.”
“What part?”
“Never mind,” Rapp growled. “What else do you have on him?”
“He’s rumored to have operated in Africa, mostly the east side…Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, but they don’t have anything concrete on him.”
